The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns eBook

essential respects his life was wrecked, and that
he had nothing to hope for save hollow worldly success.
He knew that Ruth would return the ring. He could
almost see the postman holding the little cardboard
cube which would contain the rendered ring. He
had loved, and loved tragically. (That was how he
put it—­in his unspoken thoughts; but the
truth was merely that he had loved something too expensive.)
Now the dream was done. And a man of disillusion
walked along the Parade towards St Asaph’s Road
among revellers, a man with a past, a man who had
probed women, a man who had nothing to learn about
the sex. And amid all the tragedy of his heart,
and all his apprehensions concerning hollow, worldly
success, little thoughts of absurd unimportance kept
running about like clockwork mice in his head.
Such as that it would be a bit of a bore to have to
tell people at Bursley that his engagement, which
truly had thrilled the town, was broken off.
Humiliating, that! And, after all, Ruth was a
glittering gem among women. Was there another
girl in Bursley so smart, so effective, so truly ornate?

Then he comforted himself with the reflection:
“I’m certainly the only man that ever
ended an engagement by just saying ‘Rothschild!’”
This was probably true. But it did not help him
to sleep.

II

The next morning at 5.20 the youthful sun was shining
on the choppy water of the Irish Sea, just off the
Little Orme, to the west of Llandudno Bay. Oscillating
on the uneasy waves was Denry’s lifeboat, manned
by the nodding bearded head, three ordinary British
longshoremen, a Norwegian who could speak English
of two syllables, and two other Norwegians who by
a strange neglect of education could speak nothing
but Norwegian.

Close under the headland, near a morsel of beach lay
the remains of the Hjalmar in an attitude of
repose. It was as if the Hjalmar, after
a long struggle, had lain down like a cab-horse and
said to the tempest: “Do what you like
now!”

“Yes,” the venerable head was piping.
“Us can come out comfortable in twenty minutes,
unless the tide be setting east strong. And, as
for getting back, it’ll be the same, other way
round, if ye understand me.”

There could be no question that Simeon had come out
comfortable. But he was the coxswain. The
rowers seemed to be perspiringly aware that the boat
was vast and beamy.

Denry had never before been outside the bay.
In the navigation of pantechnicons on the squall-swept
basins of canals he might have been a great master,
but he was unfitted for the open sea. At that
moment he would have been almost ready to give the
lifeboat and all that he owned for the privilege of
returning to land by train. The inward journey
was so long that Denry lost hope of ever touching
his native island again. And then there was a
bump. And he disembarked, with hope burning up
again cheerfully in his bosom. And it was a quarter
to six.